When I [31F] have emotional responses to my husband’s [32M] words or mood changes, he gets upset. I’m so tired of everything feeling like my fault no matter what.

(Reposted with language removed that I didn't realize was against the rules, apologies.)

We’ve been together eight years. No kids. This feels very hard to explain, but I’m going to try. It doesn’t happen every day, or even every week. Sometimes it happens only one or two times a month, sometimes it happens several times a day. Today it happened twice.

First, on our way to get our second vaccine shots, my husband plugged his phone into the aux cord of the car and started playing music, all excited. I was really tired as I hadn’t slept all night, so I made a bad joke about being more pumped before the music came on and didn’t seem super enthused (because I was exhausted.) When I didn’t act excited about him playing music, he got upset, turned the music off, said he would never play music again without me initiating it, and said sorry for trying. I was shocked, as I always am, by this sudden change in mood and responded by feeling bad, being hurt that I somehow caused this drastic change in his mood and killed his fun, explained that I was just joking and that I’m very tired and that he can play all the music he wants. He responded by being upset that I would “take ownership of his emotions” and that he should be able to feel a certain way without it being my fault. I tried to explain that I thought anyone would feel responsible or bad when someone’s emotions change like that in response to something they did, but he kept insisting that it was essentially my problem for taking ownership of his emotions instead of just letting him feel however he feels, that I wasn’t understanding what he was trying to say, and eventually we both just dropped it because it wasn’t going anywhere productive. I was really hurt and also felt bad that I was, as usual, somehow twisted into being unreasonable for having a reaction to him, but I’m used to dropping things by now and just wanted to focus on getting our shots. I let it go.

Then, a few hours after getting home today, we started having side effects to our vaccine doses. We took naps and he woke up with body aches and a headache, me with a sore arm and a strange taste in my mouth. I mentioned that food tasted strange as well, a side effect I wasn’t expecting – I know that it’s not a super common side effect, but I found a few cases of people talking about it online, so I wasn’t overly concerned. Neither of us had been anywhere in weeks before today so I found it unlikely that I would be coming down with the virus, and the vaccine seemed like the obvious culprit, even if it’s a little unusual. He started looking things up about it and stressing out until finally he suggested I might need to get tested, obviously really worrying about it, which in turn made me start to worry. As soon as I started reacting with worry, though, he got upset again, saying sorry and sighing, saying that it’s obvious he should keep his thoughts to himself instead of thinking out loud, basically acting as though me reacting with worry was ridiculous and a nuisance. He has a lot of health-related anxiety, so I pointed out that I felt like if I had said the same thing to him he would start to worry in a similar way, that I didn’t feel like I was being unreasonable in reacting to what he’d said, but he was already too upset by then to be reasoned with. The situation kept escalating until I told him he was being a rude name for no reason (name-calling is not good, I know, I was just so frustrated and had had it with today), he started yelling and just kept acting like I was being crazy and calling him out over nothing, that I always think he’s rude or call him out over everything (I don’t, I just try to point out when he’s rude to me like this because… shouldn’t I be able to do that?) and kept talking about how sick he felt and that he couldn’t believe I was putting all of this on him right now.

I left the room, not wanting to be around him and figuring I would give him space to nap or whatever he needs to do since he doesn’t feel well. He messaged me trying to talk about it more, and when I responded, he acted like I was being cruel to him while he was sick, kept emphasizing how bad he felt physically, and acted like I had started the conversation when I was just responding to what he had said. Eventually I just told him I was going to leave him alone so he could rest and quit talking to him. Now I’m here typing this post. Obviously what triggers this type of thing just depends on the day, but hopefully the examples from today paint a picture of what it’s like: he says or does something, I react to what he says or does in a way he doesn’t expect or like, he gets upset, then when I get upset in response to that, he gets upset at that too. It’s usually twisted so that it’s somehow my fault for being too sensitive, taking ownership of his emotions when I should just ignore it, or generally just doing something or another wrong. Yet, in contrast, he also gets upset that I always think things are my fault after they’re painted that way. "Why do you always have to feel like everything is your fault?" is tossed around a lot. I’m left to feel like I’m doing something wrong no matter what, basically. I can't apologize and move on because that's taking ownership, and I also can't react in any way to begin with or that's wrong too. I feel really lost and don’t know how to make it so this doesn’t happen. Couples counseling? Medication? Individual therapy? I just want our lives to not suck so bad. It’s been like this for the duration of our entire relationship and I just keep waiting for it to get better and it doesn’t.

For further context: My husband is diagnosed as bipolar, took medicine for a long time, then decided he didn’t like taking medicine or how it makes him feel and has taken nothing for about a year now. I think the obvious thing would be to point at this and say “he needs medicine again” but if I’m being honest, he was like this when he was medicated, too, and I never saw that much of a difference, which is why I didn’t super push the issue. I don’t know if a different medicine might be needed, if the diagnosis is wrong, or if this has absolutely nothing to do with that, but it might be relevant so there it is. Thank you in advance for any helpful advice.

TL;DR – My husband often gets upset with me when I respond to his words or emotions in a way he doesn’t like or anticipate, then gets upset even more if I react to him being upset with me. It’s always twisted into somehow being my fault, but also if I try to take ownership of the situation or apologize he is again (big surprise) upset with me. I’m so tired.

Submitted April 22, 2021 at 07:48PM by TiredOP https://ift.tt/3neWC4t